Jim Thorpe Accomplishments

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Jim Thorpe had an incredible life and impacted sports history forever. He had a very interesting and eventful life and it all started out by just working at home, he never had even played sports before. Before long he was in the Olympics, Professional Football and Baseball, and so much more. He was an all around athlete and he didn’t know for years. People loved Thorpe so much that after his death, they named many things after him and did lots of things to make sure he was remembered. Here’s his incredible story. Thorpe grew up learning how to provide for himself and his family. He was part Indian and since he was young he learned how to hunt and trap prey on his families Indian Territory. He gained his legendary endurance from his way of …show more content…

Right away, he won four of the five events and got a gold medal in the pentathlon. A week later, in a pair of mismatched shoes in the decathlon, he won the high jump, 110-meter hurdles and the 1,500 meter. He finished the three-day event with a total of 8,412.96 points out of a possible 10,000 and Sweden’s King Gustaf V proclaimed Thorpe the greatest athlete in the world. Although, that following January a newspaper report was released that said Thorpe had been paid to play in minor league baseball in 1909 and 1910. Right away, he was stripped of his Amature eligibility and forced to return his gold medals and his historic performance was taken out of the Olympic record books. After that, in 1913 he played professional baseball for the Giants and then from 1915 to about 1921 he played professional football for three national championships. Then from 1922-1923 he coached and played for an all-Native American team called the Oorang Indians. Thorpe then went onto playing for the NFL’s Cleveland Indians, Rock Island Independents, New York Giants and Chicago Cardinals through 1928 (Biography.com). According to Britannica.com he was even the first president of the American Professional Football Association, which is now called the National Football League (NFL). All of this information is important because it shows how Thorpe had an amazing sports career all throughout

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